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China Chokes On Smog So Bad That Planes Can't Land (usatoday.com)
Major cities across northern China choked Monday under a blanket of smog so thick that industries were ordered shut down and air and ground traffic was disrupted. From a report: At least 23 cities issued red alerts for a swath of pollution that has hovered over much of the nation since Friday, China's Xinhua news agency reported. Alerts are expected to remain in effect through Wednesday. Hospitals set emergency procedures in motion to deal with an influx of breathing-related illnesses. Large hospitals in the port city of Tianjin, less than 100 miles southeast of Beijing, saw a surge in asthma and other respiratory issues, China's People's Daily reported. The pollution forced the city to close the highways and caused delays and cancellations for dozens of flights, Xinhua said.
This is what you get with low cost manufacturing!
Trump is right china is gaming the system.
Trump is hobbling the EPA so badly that by the time he's done our smog will be so bad that we can't land airplanes either.
This is what you get with Trump / Putin's anti-environment policies.
Choke on it, fascists.
Flint proves the need for a strong, empowered EPA.
But of course when a republican governor instructs a republican he appointed to poison Flint's water supply he's going to blame the EPA..
The EPA is of course basically the only organization which can compel republicans to stop poisoning their citizens, so they are de-legitimized and have the hands tied at every step of the way.
As long as the people who care about clean water don't bother voting, republicans will continue to poison our water supply.
Hey, no problem. The air is clean here. We outsource our pollution to China and India.
Corporate CEOs love that stuff. It's what they get measured by.
We save billions of dollars importing products produced for far less than we could and we breathe clean air and drink clean water. If this is losing then I'd hate to see what winning looks like.
The fact that Flint is seen as a major disaster, worthy of much outrage, as opposed to the norm, shows just how good a job the EPA is doing.
In the US we take it for granted that we can go anywhere in the country and the drinking water will be safe and clean. It may taste like ass at times, but we don't have to boil it or worry about getting some kind of stomach virus. We don't have to tell people, "Don't drink the water" like if you go to Mexico or Latin America. We don't have to worry about heavy metals or radioactive materials in our drinking water.
In the US we take it for granted that we can walk outside without the need for surgical face masks or even full on gas-masks because there's a choking cloud of smog in the air. Before Nixon created the EPA, we had cities that looked a lot like China.
In the US we take it for granted that the sky looks BLUE and not ORANGE because only the longer red wavelengths of light can cut through the smog. Read some of the stories about how before the Beijing Olympics, when the government seeded the clouds to temporarily flush all the smog, people would wander outside and marvel at the blue sky.
All of these things are because of the EPA, and they don't even scratch the surface of what that agency does. So, once again, because cases like Flint are so far outside of the norm that they shock and anger us, just goes to show how good a job the EPA is actually doing.
The Republican governor appointed a Democrat 'emergency manager'. They knew Flint was basically unfixable and that they would shortly be putting the blame on the last person in charge, hence the booby prize was given to a D (but he was forced to live in a budget).
IIRC that last lead water pipe was put in the Flint ground in the 1930s. What year did they go bankrupt again? What party ran the city for the last 70+ years?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You are correct on many points but I think you missed another very important point. China is doing now what Europe and America did in the late 1700s and early 1800s. They are going through an industrial revolution. When this happened in the UK they had air quality issues too, possibly much worse than this even.
This is a classic example of those not learning from history are doomed to repeat it. China is a society built by the vision of a small group of people which has been imposed on the rest of the population by force and fear. It's also quite possible these elite few do know their history, know that their policy puts the public under such misery and threatens their health but they don't care. They would much rather take a path that creates greater wealth and power for themselves even if that means the rest suffer.
China though could be a lesson for the rest of the world. I keep hearing on how we need more government to control global warming and pollution. Well, China has a society that has a near total control of every aspect of the lives of the people in their nation and they have the worst air quality in the world. A question I have for these big government types, once the government has the ability to tell the people what kind of toilets they can buy, the kind of light bulbs, cars, soft drinks, clothing, the size of their house, the number of children, and on and on then what motivation would they have to care if the people don't like the air quality that their policies produced? If it takes smart people in government to tell us what to do to make our lives better then what is there to make sure that it is smart people that remain in government? Free elections perhaps? Freedom to speak?
The people in China are constantly lied to by the government, no doubt "for their own good" in the eyes of the government. The Chinese government claims this smog is the result of a natural event. They also know better because they have shutdown factories in response.
China is a polluted hell hole because they are going through an industrial revolution. It will remain a polluted hell hole until the people are free to choose who is in government and are free to speak out against their government. We've seen this before. History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
This is what you get with low cost manufacturing!
Trump is right china is gaming the system.
Don't forget the thousands of coal mine deaths to fuel the factories that produce the inexpensive shit that the oligarchs want made there in order to sell cheaply in America.
And don't forget the Chinese multi-millionaires coming to the USA in throngs to invest their dirty profits buying up real-estate, which should be illegal.
If you think China is anything close to fair or treats people fair, watch this.